


the care & feeding of small marine animals

by jollypuppet



Category: Free!
Genre: Aquariums, Comedy, Fluff, Free! Kink Meme, M/M, Other, Romance, nagisa really wants to be friends with haruka and haruka is secretly married to makoto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 12:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1940679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jollypuppet/pseuds/jollypuppet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I <i>have</i> to make friends with him, Rei-chan.” He says gravely. “There’s not a single person who works in this aquarium that I don’t have at least one inside joke with. I’m not gonna let the dolphins <i>friendblock</i> me.” He lets go of Rei’s collar and crosses his arms. “I have a reputation to uphold.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the care & feeding of small marine animals

**Author's Note:**

> This took me forever to write and I have absolutely no idea why. It also came out way longer than I was expecting so, uh, yeah, there's that too.
> 
> Written for a prompt on the Free! kink meme: "Haruka's the new guy at work and everyone think he's super mysterious and they find out he's married so they're like, "Oh, who's his wife?" but then they all go to an office party and find out it's Makoto ooh." That's not necessarily verbatim.
> 
> SeiGou and ReiGisa if you squint. My Seijuurou is extremely and unintentionally Octopimp-inspired.

Haruka Nanase starts working at the aquarium on a Tuesday, and immediately catches the attention of… well, everybody. Or at least everybody important. Rei and Nagisa. Rei and Nagisa notice, and everyone else kinda doesn’t, but hey, they said everyone _important_ , didn’t they? Sheesh.

“Employment records show he used to do internships here, and we needed someone new to tend for the dolphin tanks after that short guy developed a phobia,” Rin tells them without looking up from his “I’m an important vice supervisor look at me” clipboard.

“I don’t know, but he’s cute, don’t you think? We need more cute guys around here, I think. Don’t look at me like that,” is all Gou has to offer, and Seijuurou just kinda shrugs and says around a mouthful of protein bar, “Maybe he’s, like, a psychic or something. Or a telepath.” He presses a finger to his temple. “He can only communicate through his mind.”

“Maybe,” Nitori supplies, nervously, “maybe he’s just really shy? I don’t know. I was really shy when I first started, too. Does that make sense?”

So that Tuesday, needless to say, is a little bit on the “not productive in any way, shape, or form” side of the spectrum, but that doesn’t deter Nagisa or Rei. It doesn’t deter Nagisa. Rei kind of gets dragged along for the most part, but hey, Nagisa can be persuasive.

That’s how they find themselves peering around the corner of the hallway that leads to the dolphin tanks. Tours have been shut down and the last of the aquarium-goers are filing out through the front hall penguin exhibit, (“ _My_ personal favorite exhibit, but I guess the dolphins are okay, too,” Nagisa is eager to mention,) so the back hall exhibits are bare and quiet. There are some other aquarists milling around, taking care of the other animals and cleaning up the halls, but Nagisa and Rei are laser-focused on one tank in specific. Or, the guy in front of that tank. The new guy.

_The new guy._

“He’s just staring,” Rei mumbles, leaning over Nagisa’s head to get a better look, “why is he just staring? He could go to the upper deck if he wanted to play with them, but he’s just… he’s just _looking at them_.”

“What are you guys doing?” Seijuurou calls from across the hall at the sea otter tank, but they wave him away quickly and keep their eyes steadily set on Haruka and the dolphins. The new guy doesn’t seem to notice, though, and as a dolphin swims by the glass of the tank, slightly intrigued by its observer, the new guy lifts his hand in this small, aborted wave. He puts his hand back in his pocket almost immediately, but doesn’t move from where he stands.

“I bet he’s got some deep, dark, tragic past.” Nagisa whispers. “Like, some prophetic and metaphorical reason for loving dolphins so much.” He gasps suddenly. “Maybe his dad was lost at sea and dolphins brought him back to shore.”

“I don’t think that happened.” Rei says bluntly.

“Well, fine, crush my dreams.”

Rei stands up and cracks his back. “I can’t really take much more of this, Nagisa. I have to go clean the sea dragon exhibit. I keep telling the kids on tours not to touch the glass, but that’s all they ever do, they just touch the glass and -” Rei yelps as his collar is suddenly yanked down so that he and Nagisa are more level with each other.

“I _have_ to make friends with him, Rei-chan.” He says gravely. “There’s not a single person who works in this aquarium that I don’t have at least one inside joke with. I’m not gonna let the dolphins _friendblock_ me.” He lets go of Rei’s collar and crosses his arms. “I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Well, we can’t _spy_ on him.”  
  
“Who are you spying on?”

Seijuurou walks over to them with a hand on his hip and a questioning look on his face, having finally extricated himself from the group of eager onlookers at the sea otter tank watching the otters play catch. Nagisa points as discreetly (it’s not very discreet) as he can at Haruka and the dolphin tank. “We’re spying on him.”  
  
Seijuurou looks over and furrows his brow. “You guys are still going on about new guy?” He brings his gaze back to the two of them. “If you really wanna know stuff about him, then you should go see Rin, he’s the one with all the employee files. Or, I dunno, do something a little less obvious than stare at him around a corner.”

“What would you suggest?” Rei asks.

“I dunno.” Seijuurou frowns, bringing his hand up to rub the back of his neck. “I still haven’t gotten past the 128 tile in 2048, I’m probably not the best person to talk to about espionage.”

“You tried, that’s all that counts.” Nagisa sighs.

They take his advice, though, as he did offer at least some advice, and head to Rin’s office and knock ever so gently on the door because Rin is _vice supervisor_ and he’s _super important_ (he used to maintain the shark tunnel, is the thing, until he was abruptly promoted, and they still kind of poke fun at him about having to get all serious and office supplies-y.)

“Say what you want about me getting all stiff and wearing a tie all the time.” Rin sighs as he sits down behind his desk after letting them in. “I miss the shark tunnel more than anything. I feel like Haruka, sometimes, but more about the sharks than the dolphins. They got me.”

“It’s funny you should mention the new guy, actually!” Nagisa bobs up and down on the balls of his feet as Rei stands motionless beside him, arms crossed and a little spacy as he stares at the poster of a cartoon kitten hanging from a tree branch on Rin’s wall (seems out of place.) “We were wondering if there was, I dunno, anything you could _tell_ us about him? You hired him after all.” He grabs Rei’s arm suddenly, and that snaps him out of his daze. “We want to make friends with him, but we don’t really know how to start a conversation.”

Rin stares at Nagisa, his eyes flitting briefly to Rei in a communal moment of _what_ before returning to Nagisa. “I can’t give you any personal details about him, really, it’s against employee policy.” Nagisa blows a raspberry at him and he rolls his eyes. “But if you wanna make friends with him so badly, then why don’t you invite him to lunch? He likes the dolphins, talk about that Morgan Freeman movie with the half-cyborg dolphin.”

“That was a movie?” Rei mumbles.

Nagisa whines, but he lets go of Rei’s arm. “I mean, fine, if you wanna make our lives _hard_ , Rin-chan.” He grins a little, then. “Sorry! I meant Matsuoka-san, I really should stop forgetting about that.”

Rin rubs the bridge of his nose, but there’s a bit of a smile on his face, so at least there’s that. There’s still a camaraderie between them that hasn’t been lost, even though Rin’s moved up the bureaucratic ladder. “Don’t worry yourself over it, really, I think I’ll be fine.” He taps a pencil against the shark bobblehead on his desk. “Remember to shut the door behind you on the way, the interns this year are surprisingly loud in the hallways.”

They leave Rin’s office and head back out into the halls of the temperate gallery, and Nagisa walks with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the ceiling as they walk towards the locker rooms.

“Do you want to invite him to lunch tomorrow, Rei-chan? Like Rin-chan said?” He asks. His smile widens suddenly, and he’s excited when he continues, “Yeah, we could have a block lunch! We could invite everyone, you know? The interns are on schedule for tours tomorrow, so we’ll all have the time off.”

“A welcome lunch sounds like an alright idea.” Rei tells him. “As long as it isn’t in Breakroom B. The vending machine in there doesn’t have animal crackers, it really just puts a damper on my lunch _every day_.”

“Deal!” Nagisa says, clapping him on the shoulder, and the temperate gallery settles into silence as they leave the aquarium behind for the day.

\--

Breakroom A is known amongst the aquarists as Breakroom Awesome, because that’s what it is. The interns don’t know yet, so they still have the privacy of the place to themselves, the vending machines are always working and well-stocked and the coffee machine is one of those fancy ones with the plastic cups of European blends. Seijuurou and Gou are already there when Rei and Nagisa arrive, and the conversation in the room perks up considerably.

“I’m gonna have to cut out a little early.” Rin says as he walks into the break room, followed closely behind by Nitori. He rolls up the sleeves of his dress shirt. “I have a conference call with Supervisors Sasabe and Amakata, I guess we’ve got, like, five million field trips coming through next week.”

Rei puts his hands up defensively. “I’m on wet lab all next week, you guys are on your own.”

Before Nagisa even has a chance to turn his head, Seijuurou and Gou high-five in this weirdly intense way that clearly says _You and I are tour partners and there’s nothing you can do about it_ , before breaking down into giggles. He pouts and turns to Nitori. “Is it you and me, then, Ai-chan?”  
  
Nitori looks sheepish suddenly. “S-Sorry, Matsuoka-san asked me to help him sort through some of the archived research materials. I’m booked up.”

“Then who am I supposed to tour with?!”

“Is this is the welcome lunch?”  
  
The room goes silent as everyone looks up to the door, and standing there is quiet, dolphin-loving, weird new guy Haruka Nanase, holding a bento box and… actually looking kind of nervous. He doesn’t enter the break room for a moment or two, but eventually he steps over the threshold of the door, and the room explodes.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you properly!” Nagisa shoots up from his seat and darts over to meet him. “I’m Nagisa Hazuki, I maintain the rockhopper exhibit, and -- and, uh, you know Rin-chan, and,” Nagisa surveys the room quickly, “well, this is Ai-chan, and over there’s Rei-chan, and Sei-chan, and Gou-chan, and,” he turns back to beam at Haruka, “we’re really, really excited for you to join the team, Haru-chan!”

“Haru-chan?” Haruka asks dubiously, and Rin tugs on the back of Nagisa’s collar to get him to back off a bit. Rei pats a seat next to him at the table and smiles, and the rest of the standing party decides to finally take their place with their lunches. Haruka seems hesitant, but eventually he walks over and sets his box down on the table.

“So,” Seijuurou speaks up around a bite of his apple, “how are you liking the job so far? Is it everything you hoped it would be?”  
  
Haruka unwraps his bento gingerly and he keeps his eyes trained on his hands, “I guess so. It’s been fun so far, and relaxing. My last job was kind of hectic, so I needed a change of pace.” He opens the box and picks up his chopsticks carefully, and Gou leans over the table to steal one of Seijuurou’s chips.

“Where did you work before you came here?” she asks. “I mean, I pretty much got this job straight out of college. Kind of works out in my favor that the vice supervisor is my brother.” She laughs and Rin groans, making some comment about how he wasn’t vice supervisor when she was hired, but they go quiet when Haruka clears his throat gently.

“I coached a swim team at a local high school.” he says. “I used to swim competitively. I don’t really have the heart for competing, though, I never did. I just like the water.”

“You really like the dolphin exhibit too, right?” Nagisa interjects, and Haruka seems a bit surprised, but he nods. “I like the penguins the most, personally. Rin-chan’s more of a shark person, and Rei-chan keeps insisting that his favorite animal is a butterfly even though butterflies aren’t animals.”

“It’s in the animal kingdom!” Rei protests.

“Dolphins are special, I think.” Haruka says quietly. “I don’t know why, really. They just are.”

“You don’t have to know why!” Nagisa says excitedly, and he throws his hands up, nearly knocking over Rei’s water bottle in the process. “That’s the cool thing about working at an aquarium! You get to see all the super cute marine life all the time, it’s awesome.” He folds his arms against the table and slumps so that his chin is resting on his sleeves, and he smiles. “We have a couple of field trips coming through next week, you know, and tour guides are supposed to work in pairs. Do you wanna be my partner, Haru-chan?”  
  
“Now you just sound like you’re flirting with him.” Rin mumbles from the other end of the table as he bites into his sandwich, and Gou snickers.

“Oh, _please_ , like he needs me to flirt with him.” Nagisa scoffs. “Haru-chan seems like a really cool guy! He’s probably got girls falling all over him, right, Haru-chan?”

“I thought we were talking about tour guide partners.” Rei says.

Seijuurou, staring at the ceiling, says, “You guys lost me, like, five minutes ago.”

“Right, this is getting kind of weird.” Rin says, glancing at his watch. “Well, you crazy kids, I’ve gotta be off to my meeting. I’ll see you all later.” He leaves almost as quickly as he came, going out of his way to ruffle Gou’s hair affectionately before leaving the break room and heading down the hallway towards his office. Nagisa is still laser-focused on Haruka, though, as are Gou and Nitori, while Seijuurou and Rei sit idly by, slightly confused.

Haruka takes a long, contemplative sip of from his bottled iced tea, before oh so nonchalantly, oh so candidly, oh so _blandly_ , saying, “I wouldn’t know. I’m married.”

“ _What?!_ ”  
  
He jumps, suddenly, because that was everyone, literally _everyone_ at the lunch table in Breakroom A with the awesome vending machines and the cool fancy coffee maker just _stopped what they were doing_ to look at Haruka in disbelief. There’s a soft thud as Seijuurou’s apple core rolls off the table onto the floor, and the silence is unbearable for the moment or two that it lasts.

Haruka, puzzled, holds up his left hand, and sure as can be, there’s a gold wedding band sitting right there on his ring finger (who did they not _notice_ that?) “I, uh. Yeah. This isn’t a fashion statement.”

“You didn’t mention that you were married!”  
  
“I didn’t think it was important. How does this change anything?”

“It doesn’t.” Rei steps in, because he can see how this conversation could possibly derail and he wants to prevent it, if he can. “You just seem like such a private guy, it’s a bit of a surprise. I mean, not even Seijuurou-san is married, and he’s pushing forty.”

“That’s literally not true, I’m twenty-seven!” Seijuurou argues, and Nagisa makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat as he tries not to laugh. Rei’s not the type to joke, but it lightens a situation that could have otherwise become kind of unintentionally offensive to the new guy.

“What does she look like?!” Gou asks excitedly. “What’s her name?! How did you guys meet?! Oh, my gosh, was it romantic when you proposed to her?” She squeals a bit. “I _love_ romantic stuff, it’s so cute!”

Haruka opens his mouth to answer just as a group of interns run through the door yelling something about a lost child in the aquarium, and Seijuurou, Gou, and Nitori stand up reflexively to go help them. Nagisa and Rei are slower to leave the lunch table, and they look back to Haruka, who’s carefully wrapping his bento back up and twisting the cap back onto his tea.

“Maybe we can have lunch again sometime.” he says, and there’s a hint of genuineness to it, a definite note of true gratitude to the way he says it. “And I’ll tour with you, Nagisa. Thanks for asking me.”

He walks out before Nagisa can say anything else, and he’s already gone when Nagisa groans loudly and slams his head against the surface of the table.

“At least you’re friends now.” Rei ruffles his hair gently, and the blonde mutters something along the lines of _whole new mystery_ into the wooden table. Rei sighs and pries him out of the chair to venture into the halls with the rest of them, and they find the lost child eating soap out of one of the women’s bathrooms, but no matter how funny and dumb that is, Nagisa’s mood doesn’t brighten for the rest of the day.

\--

They’re about halfway through the week when they collapse in Breakroom A again, absolutely _exhausted_ and so sick of elementary-aged kids that they wouldn’t mind punching Dora the Explorer in the face. Seijuurou and Gou are practically mirroring each other with how they have their heads lying on the table, and Rei’s looking just as perky as ever, which makes Nagisa kinda mad, but it’s also kinda cute, so he doesn’t mind too much.

“How many tours have you done this week, Nagisa?” Seijuurou asks, his voice cracking in the middle, but he doesn’t seem to notice or even care. “Gou, how many have _we_ done? What day is it? Where are we?”  
  
“We’ve done twelve.” Gou sighs. “What about you, Nagisa?”  
  
Nagisa leans his head against the heel of his hand and yawns. “Haru-chan and I have done nine. One of the kids threw up over the railing into the penguin exhibit. Who even does that?” He gives the empty seat in front of him a nice, strong thousand-yard stare. “Who would ever let a child do something like that?”

“Where is Haruka, anyway?” Rei asks as he rounds the table with a tray carrying three cups of coffee. He sets one down in front of Seijuurou, who doesn’t move, and one in front of Gou, who kinda just groans and rolls her head to the side. Nagisa takes his and smiles. “Rin’s been having lunch meetings all week and Nitori’s still in archives, but where did he get off to?”  
  
“He said he was gonna take his lunch hour and go eat at home. I didn’t get a chance to ask him anything other than that.” Nagisa yawns. “You turn on one educational audio clip, turn away for a second to ask your new friend what he’s doing for lunch, and suddenly a kid barfs on the rockhoppers. I am positively _scarred_.”

Gou lifts her head just the tiniest bit off the table, seems to finally register the cup of coffee next to her, and makes a grunting sound of gratitude at Rei as she picks it up and sips it. “So he went home to his cute wife, right?” she says dreamily (because, yeah, Haruka probably has a cute romantic marriage, but also because she’s dead tired.) “She’s probably making him bento right now and he probably kissed her on the cheek when he walked in…” She trails off, gently nudging Seijuurou’s head to get him to drink his own mug of coffee.

“I dunno,” he mumbles, taking his own mug. He squints at the coffee inside and gets up to grab the carton of milk in the small break room kitchen. “He’s such a quiet guy that the girl he married is probably super energetic.” He calls from the fridge. “Maybe, like, sporty or something.”  
  
“I’m not sure about that.” Rei replies. “He’s an athlete himself, but he said he doesn’t like competition. I don’t think he’d mesh well with someone competitive like another athlete.” He thinks for a moment. “But she probably is very high-energy. Opposites do attract, after all.”

“Then she’s probably really sociable, too.” Gou adds. “Haruka hardly ever talks and he’s so quiet when he does, his wife could probably make the phonebook sound interesting.” She looks up at Seijuurou as he yawns and returns to his seat. “Don’t you think, Sei?”  
  
He shrugs. “All I can think of is a really short, petite girl, I guess.” He sips his coffee and everyone around him nods in agreement.

Nagisa folds his hands together, keeping his eyes focused on the way his fingers lace together against the surface of the table. “So,” he starts, sounding deep in thought, “she’s bubbly, sociable, and probably small. Is that what we’re going with here?”  
  
“Or she could be a tall giant who’s sadistic and hates people.” Rei says flatly.

“Or she could be a _dude!_ ” Seijuurou jumps in, but the three of his coworkers think it over very briefly before shaking their heads and dismissing the idea. He sighs. “I got nothing, man, what kind of girl marries a dude like him anyway?”  
  
“A romantic!”

“Someone who’s reserved.”

“Someone happy!”

Gou, Rei, and Nagisa look at each other, and Seijuurou just yawns. “I still think it’s a guy.”

“Well, then,” Nagisa says with an air of finality, “let’s bet on it, then! Everyone who loses has to take turns buying lunch for the whole team for a month. Gou says she’s romantic, Rei says she’s reserved, I say she’s happy, and no matter how you look at it, Sei-chan’s gonna end up buying lunch for a while,” Seijuurou splutters at that, “so now we just have to figure out who she is!”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Rei asks, sounding equal parts suspicious and nervous. “Invite her to take complimentary tours or something? Are we magically all going to be invited to some office party and she’ll show up as his plus one?”

Nitori walks by the break room just then and sticks his head in. “Hi guys! I have to get back to work, but Matsuoka-san just told me that Supervisor Sasabe feels really bad about having to schedule all these field trip tours this week, so he’s holding a pool party at his house this Sunday! The official invite email will be going out tomorrow. See you later!”  
  
He leaves, and Nagisa jumps to his feet. “Fortune favors the bold!”

“That doesn’t even make _sense!_ ”

\--

They all get the invitation email the next day during their very short breaks in between carting around little kids, and they each RSVP on their own time in their own tiny little cramped cubicles before having to return to herding around children like gross, barfy sheep. Nagisa doesn’t have time to approach Haruka about the party or about his wife, too paranoid that Rin will chew him out again over some other unfortunate incident involving a weak-stomached child, but it’s all worth it when they get the potluck email at the end of the day.

“Potluck?” Seijuurou groans from his cubicle, halfway across the room. “I don’t know how to cook anything, what am I supposed to bring for a finger food?” He’s the most comical of the group to look at, trying to cram his long, lanky limbs underneath his desk, and he cranes his neck over the partition separating his area and Gou’s. “Can I just bring some crackers? Is that lazy?”

“Guys, guys, guys, _look!_ ”

They all go back to the reading the email at Nagisa’s urging, and they all immediately see what he’s referring to.

_… and that does it for the interns and what they have to bring (please, while we appreciate creativity and innovation, we ask that you don’t bring anything flammable as it’s uncourteous and frankly dangerous.)_

_As for the aquarists:_  
_Seijuurou Mikoshiba - finger food_  
_Gou Matsuoka (+1) (note: Gou, I am your plus one, get over it) - dessert_  
_Nagisa Hazuki - paper plates, cups, etc._  
_Rei Ryugazaki - plasticware_  
_Aiichirou Nitori - finger food_  
_Haruka Nanase (+1) - beverages_

_If you have any questions, feel free to email me (if I find out that any of the interns emailed Supervisors Sasabe or Amakata, said intern(s) will face **serious repercussions** , I swear on everything I stand for.) Thank you all for your hard work and we’ll see you this Sunday._

_Rin Matsuoka, Vice Supervisor, still a cool guy_

“I think it’s cute that he adds little personal touches to his emails.” Gou giggles.

“No, Gou-chan, _look!_ ” Nagisa urges, climbing into a kneeling position on his rolling chair to look over the stupid, kind of useless cubicle partitions and grin at her. “Look at Haru-chan, he’s bringing a plus one!”  
  
Rei hums contemplatively. “So that must be his wife.”  
  
“I’ll finally be able to prove to you guys that - _ow!_ ” Seijuurou brings his knee up to rub where it banged against the underside of his desk. “That he’s married to a dude.” He chews out.

“Keep telling yourself that, Sei-chan.” Nagisa chirps, and he throws his fists in the air triumphantly. “All bets are off this Sunday! Also, I need someone to drive me to the grocery store!”  
  
\--

The cool thing about Supervisors Sasabe and Amakata is that they’re both relatively young and not awkward stuffy guys in suits that would be scandalized to be seen anywhere near a pool. The uncool thing about that, however, is that Supervisor Sasabe insists on wearing a garishly-patterned full-body swimsuit, and even Supervisor Amakata looks on with slight embarrassment from underneath her delicate parasol.

By the time Nagisa and Rei arrive, the party is already in full motion (“I told you we shouldn’t have stopped for slushies, Nagisa,”) and they seem to be some of the last guests to arrive. Gou is standing by the snack table and shouts _Late!_ at them to the amusement of everyone around her, and Nagisa sticks his tongue out at her as he and Rei approach, plastic bags full of plates and bendy forks in tow.

Nagisa bounds up to their little group, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “So, so, so? Has anybody seen her yet? What’s she look like, where is she?” He turns his attention away from them to start haphazardly scanning the crowd, but Gou gently grabs his wrist to turn him around.

“Nagisa, don’t just stare around like that! You’re not a hawk.” she grumbles, and Seijuurou crunches loudly on a pretzel beside her, nodding. “Besides, we haven’t seen her yet, either. We just showed up a couple minutes ago -”

“You said we were _late!_ ”

“I know what I said!” she huffs. “The point is, Haruka-kun was already here when Sei and I got here, and he’s been talking to Supervisor Sasabe ever since.” She points through the crowd of people to the edge of Sasabe’s large, sparkling pool where Haruka and the supervisor are chatting (animatedly, on Sasabe’s part.) “Whoever she is, she’s milling around the crowd somewhere with all the interns and stuff.”

“Well, that’s easy enough.” Rei says pointedly. “Just look around until you find someone who’s not an intern.”

“You saying you know enough of the interns to go through all that process of elimination stuff?” Seijuurou asks with a hint of doubt in his tone, and Rei deflates a little, because no, none of them really know the interns all that well, but is that their fault? The interns are like weird, high-energy animals who rove the halls of the aquarium in packs and talk about Teavana.

“You have a point.” Rei concedes.

From across the backyard, Supervisor Sasabe’s laugh bellows through the party atmosphere and cuts through even the junky little boombox playing music on the railing of the porch. He claps Haruka on the shoulder and says something that the other party patrons can’t hear, so they all turn back to their individual conversations and try not to feel bad for the new dolphin guy who got roped into a conversation with Sasabe.

Nagisa sighs. “We can’t just go around asking everyone if they’re an intern. That’s suspicious, and kind of invasive.” She and Gou hum contemplatively while Rei and Seijuurou share a brief but tentative glance. “We’ll just have to catch Haruka once he’s done with Sasabe-san and ask him to introduce us.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan.” Seijuurou yawns. “See you all in three years.”

Gou punches his side, but he’s laughing anyway, so it probably didn’t hurt.

The plan is, of course, foolproof, and surprisingly simple, which is what disappoints Nagisa to a degree, but the problem isn’t so much with the complexity of the plan as it is the time frame. Supervisor Sasabe is a joyful, friendly kind of guy, and the aquarium is lucky that it has him to keep the environment a healthy place, but he just _talks_ and _talks_ for _years upon end_ , and soon enough Nagisa finds himself practically sleeping on his feet over by the punch table. He’s trying to make abstract animal shapes out of clouds in his mind when somebody taps him on the shoulder twice (because he didn’t notice the first time) and says, “Uh, excuse me?”

He turns around and immediately has to look up to not be staring at an Adam’s apple. There’s some tall guy standing behind him and smiling nervously as if he’d just awakened a sleeping giant, and Nagisa has _definitely_ never seen this guy around before. He doesn’t know what the interns have been eating, but _sheesh_ , how do people just get tall like that?

“Do you mind if I just, uh,” he rubs the back of his neck, “can I sneak around you and get some punch? You’ve been standing here for twenty minutes. Not that that’s a bad thing! You can stand wherever you want for however long you want, but I’m just really thirsty and -”

“Relax, relax!” Nagisa puts his hands up and steps aside so that Mr. Intern the Giant can grab one of the plastic Solo cups. The guy looks really grateful and grabs the punch ladle, and Nagisa studies his face for a moment. “I haven’t seen you around. What’s your name?”

Tall Guy McGee blinks, a bit surprised by the question. “Oh, Makoto. I’m Makoto.” He swaps his cup of punch to his left hand and holds his right out for a shake, and he smiles. “It’s nice to meet you, what’s your name?”

“Nagisa Hazuki, at your service.” Nagisa takes his hand jovially, and if Makoto seems a bit jarred by the energy in the handshake, Nagisa pretends not to notice. “So, how are you liking the party? I think it’s going pretty well, but if I hear Summertime Sadness come out of that boombox one more time, I  _swear._ "

“If I could have everyone’s attention!”

All eyes suddenly turn to Sasabe over by the edge of the pool, who’s standing next to a suddenly much more shirtless Haruka, looking as disinterested and quiet as ever, not reacting at all to the couple of wolf whistles that erupt from the crowd. Sasabe’s got a confident grin on his face and he slings one arm around Haruka’s shoulders.

“I’d like to introduce everyone to our newest aquarist, Haruka Nanase!” There’s scattered applause and whooping, and Nagisa can _absolutely_ hear Gou excitedly saying something along the lines of _I had no idea he had a swimmer body!_ “Before he came to work at our wonderful aquarium, Haruka hear used to coach a swim team, and it just so happens that in the days of my youth, I also swam professionally. I always had a dream of --”

“ _Please_ don’t tell the story with the boogie board again, I’ve already heard it four times.” Supervisor Amakata cuts in. “Just cut to the chase, please.” Nagisa snickers into his cup of punch and the tall guy, Makoto, chuckles behind him. There’s some scattered laughter from around the party and Sasabe pouts, but he recovers quickly.

“Anyway!” he continues. “I’ve made a bet with our newcomer here that he can’t outswim me in a freestyle race in the pool, end to end! And every good sporting bet deserves a couple of spectators, so, I invite you all to watch me humiliate this poor young man in front of all his coworkers and peers.” He laughs loudly, and Haruka takes a step closer to the pool.

“That’s so weird.” Nagisa says, tapping his fingers against the edge of the punch table. “We had lunch with him the other day, you know? He said he doesn’t like to compete.”

“Well,” Makoto supplies, “just because he doesn’t like to compete doesn’t mean he can’t.”

Nagisa furrows his brow a little bit at that, because it sounds awfully like something you would say about someone you’d known for a long time and not just a random guy at a pool party. He turns around to try and ask the tall intern guy just how he knows Haruka, but there’s already a ruckus by the pool as Sasabe and Haruka ready themselves for the race. 

“Ms. Amakata!” Sasabe calls from the edge of the pool, grinning from ear to ear like a man about to race a young twenty-something aquarium tour guide at a company pool party. “If you would do the honors!”

Supervisor Amakata doesn’t move from her dainty perch on her plastic lawn chair, but she sighs and switches hands on her parasol so that she can look at her watch. “If I must.” she says. An eager silence befalls the small group of interns who have amassed around the edges of the pool, and everyone listens with bated breath as she counts, “Ready, set… go!”

The crowd erupts into excited cheering and howling as the weird new dolphin guy and the old supervisor guy with the swimsuit vault from the edge of the pool and dive into the blue waters below. Sasabe’s pool isn’t Olympic-sized, for sure, but it’s decent-sized, and while the race is short, it’s long enough to be exhilarating and maybe kind of awesome. Sasabe and Haruka seem to hit the opposite edge of the pool at the same time and vault back toward the start of the race with the same speed, but Haruka’s stride is faster. He pulls ahead of Sasabe noticeably, and after a second or two more, slaps the concrete edge of the pool, effectively starting a whole new wave of hollering from the onlookers.

“He won!” Nagisa says, grinning, and he can hear Sasabe groaning about getting old even from the punch table. “Haru-chan must be really good, Supervisor Sasabe is always telling us about the swimming competitions he used to do when he was younger. Either that or Supervisor Sasabe is getting old.” He thinks for a moment. “It’s probably a combination of both.”  
  
Haruka allows some of the interns to clap him on the back and congratulate him, and he shares a good-natured handshake with Sasabe and graciously accepts a towel from him. The crowd around the pool begins to dissipate as the interns go back to their niches and their little private conversation, and as Haruka dries his hair off with the towel he approaches the punch table, looking no more or less energized than he did before he won (though Nagisa is learning that’s just how he is, and in a way, it’s cute.)

He smiles when Haruka reaches the table. “You said you coached a swim team but you never said you could beat a professional swimmer in a race. You’ve been holding out on me, Haru-chan.” Nagisa almost flies out of his shoes when Haruka gives him a small, friendly smile and nods, but his excitement comes crashing down when the tall intern guy behind him says, “Yeah, Haru, great job.” Haruka completely loses focus on Nagisa to look at Makoto, and Nagisa feels shafted for a moment until he sees Haruka’s expression completely change.

It doesn’t change all that much, really, but it _does_ , which is the weirdest part, and the most confusing to Nagisa. There’s no sudden grin that spreads on Haruka’s face, no bellowing laugh that abruptly erupts from his belly, nothing that any typical person would use to indicate friendliness or intimacy with another human being, except… _except_. There’s something in his eyes, really. The way his eyebrows lift and the creases in his forehead and around his cheekbones soften out, how the deep blue of his irises almost seem to darken with a deep, unspoken affection. It all seems to happen in slow motion as Nagisa watches, the way Haruka’s pupils dilate just the slightest bit, how he moves his shoulders back just a degree more to open up his torso, but none of that is as conclusive as --

“Thanks.” Haruka says simply, but he leans up and kisses the apparently-not-an-intern guy Makoto right on the lips, _right where married people kiss_. It lasts for at least a second, and Makoto rubs Haruka’s arm affectionately when he pulls away from it, and they share a quiet moment of being together at a dumb pool party with young aquaria-obsessed hipsters and some tired rockhopper penguin caretakers and --

“Hold on, _what?!_ ” Nagisa splutters, and he feels a tiny bit bad for breaking apart their sweet little moment, but mostly he’s just _baffled_ , and both Makoto and Haruka stop to look at him quizzically. “I thought -- well, I mean, _we_ thought -- but you _said_ \--”

Haruka puts a hand on Makoto’s shoulder. “Yeah, you guys said you wanted to meet my husband, so I brought him. This is Makoto.” Makoto gives him a little sheepish wave, and Nagisa is struck absolutely silent. He doesn’t even notice when Haruka looks behind him or when Rin brushes past his shoulder, holding out his hand for Makoto to shake.

“You must be the infamous husband.” Rin says, friendly and eager to show he’s _laid-back_ and _not a stuck up vice supervisor_. “It’s nice to finally meet you in the flesh.”

“Rin-chan!” Nagisa squawks. “You _knew_ about this?!”

Rin looks at him as if he has three heads, and his eyes flit from Nagisa to Makoto and back to Nagisa again before speaking. “Um… about Haru’s husband? I mean… yeah, I guess. I’m the vice supervisor, aren’t I supposed to know?” He turns to Makoto again, as if he suddenly remember something. “Oh, by the way, I tried that bento recipe you emailed me, it was _delicious_ , thanks so much again for that.”

“I’m glad you liked it.” Makoto smiles, still soft-spoken but eager to make acquaintance with Haruka’s coworkers, and _wait a minute_ , this is who he’s married to, _really?!_ “My mom gave it to me when I moved out of the house, it was always my favorite --”

“What’s going on over here?” Nagisa spins around to see Rei standing behind him, carting Gou and Mikoshiba behind him like lost puppies. Nagisa opens his mouth to speak, but fails to produce anything more than struggled sounds and weird yelping noises. Haruka speaks up before anybody else has the chance.

“Makoto, these are my coworkers,” he gestures to each of them individually, “Rei, Gou, and Seijuurou. Everyone, this is my husband, Makoto.”

Absolute _silence_.

Rei and Gou stand their with their mouths slightly agape, Rin still seems uncomfortably confused, Nagisa still has a bubbling excitement welling up inside of him capped off by bewilderment and threatening to pop, and Haruka and Makoto, the romantic married mystery couple of Breakroom A, just stand there as innocently as ever until --

“Dude, _yes!_ ” Seijuurou cheers.

\--

When the sun starts setting over the brick roof of Supervisor Sasabe’s ornate house, many of the interns have already left or are fast asleep on the plastic poolside chairs they sat down on to just “rest their eyes.” Supervisor Amakata is starting to wake some of them up and gently urge them to head back home, and many of the full-time employees have stayed behind to help clean up any leftover food and garbage.

Seijuurou and Gou are folding up the tablecloths, chattering excitedly about how _I knew he was a dude!_ and _It almost makes it even more romantic!_ while Rin and Nitori help Sasabe wrap up leftovers and heft them into the kitchen. Rei is dumping out abandoned soda cans, and Haruka is busy skimming the pool with an oddly determined expression, despite there only being a couple of leaves and the errant napkin or two swimming on its surface.

Nagisa approaches Makoto carefully, and his shoulders are hunched when he taps his shoulder to get his attention.

“I wanted to apologize if I came off as rude earlier.” he says, smiling gently. “It’s not that I was surprised that you and Haru-chan were married or anything, it’s just… well, I guess I was surprised. But not in a bad way, I mean. I, uh…” He furrows his brow. “I don’t really know what I’m saying, exactly.”

Makoto laughs, and Nagisa feels some of his apprehension dissipate. “I think I know what you’re trying to get at.” He turns his head to look at Haruka across the yard, who nearly falls into the pool as Sasabe claps him on the shoulder again and thanks him for his sportsmanship. “Haru’s the kind of guy that gets people interested in him without realizing it. I can get why you guys were wondering what his wife would be like.” He looks back at Nagisa and grins. “Or husband, in this case.”

“We just wanted to be friends with him, and to include him in the group.” Nagisa replies. He chuckles a little before saying, “You know, the day he started work, when he got off his shift, he went to the dolphin tank and just _stared_ at them for at least ten minutes. That’s when we really got interested in him, we wanted to know what he found so fascinating.”

“He always does that around dolphins.” Makoto nods as he says it.

“Why is that, anyway?”  
  
He blushes, suddenly, and Nagisa only barely notices it, but it’s definitely there when he looks a second time. Makoto brings a hand up to rub the back of his neck. “He’s always liked them, I guess, but I might have also,” he clears his throat, then, “proposed to him in front of one.”

Nagisa stares. “Oh, Gou is going to _eat that up_ _._ ” That makes Makoto laugh, which in turn gets Nagisa started, and it seems absurd to him, now, why he was so surprised that this guy could be married to the mysterious new dolphin guy. He’s sweet, and he’s personable, but he’s not too energetic, and just the right amount of laid back. It’s not like they’re exact opposites, but Nagisa can see how they fit together in a way that just… _works_ _._ They’re a quietly functional unit, unobtrusive and content in their own love.

Most of the trash and the leftover food gets put away before Sasabe starts shooing them toward the gate of his backyard, insisting, “Listen, I’m not that old, I can take care of the rest myself! You kids go on home, I’ll handle it from here.” The last of the straggling interns are eager to split without the guilt of leaving behind a mess, and the full-timers are the last ones to leave.

Haruka slips an arm around Makoto’s waist as the two of them start out toward their car. “Thank you for inviting me, again. I had a lot of fun.” He looks at Sasabe. “I’d like to race you again, sometime. You’re a great swimmer.” Sasabe lets out one of his full-belly laughs, and Rin puts one hand up.

“Anytime.” he says. “And it was nice meeting you too, Makoto. You sure caused a bit of a stir by just showing up and being married to this guy.” Makoto chuckles and slips his arm around Haruka’s shoulder.

“Yeah!” Nagisa adds. “You better show up to the rest of our parties, Mako-chan, we’d be glad to have you!” The group waves the two of them off and watches them as they go, the light from the car’s tail steadily growing smaller before eventually disappearing around a corner. Seijuurou reaches his arms up high above his head and stretches, offering to give lifts home, and Rin, Gou, and Nitori gladly accept. Rei elbows Nagisa’s side and nods toward the sidewalk.

“Should we walk?” Rei asks. He splutters a little when Nagisa threads an arm through his, but he doesn’t pull away.

“I’d love to, Rei-chan.”

\--

When Nagisa walks into Breakroom A the next morning, he sighs dramatically and holds a bag of fast food as far away from his face as he can manage without pulling a shoulder muscle. “I really can’t believe you wouldn’t take advantage of my generosity, Sei-chan. If you wanted me to buy you lunch for a month, you could have at least sent me somewhere expensive.”

Seijuurou snatches the paper bag out of Nagisa’s hand and sits down at his usual seat at the table, opening it up to rummage through its contents. “Hey, I’m not _that_ cruel, I won’t make you blow your whole life savings to get me food. Besides,” he pulls out a comically-large carton of French fries, “quality doesn’t always mean quantity.”

Rin screws the cap off his small shark-printed Thermos (“I might have to wear a tie but I’ll be goddamned if at least one thing on my person a day isn’t shark-themed”) and snorts at the grease-covered wrappers that emerge from Seijuurou’s lunch. “I seriously can’t believe you guys lost a bet as easy as that. I mean, I couldn’t really give out names, but I could have told you he was married to a _guy_.”

“I’m still mad at you for knowing the whole time and not telling us. Or me. Especially me.” Gou pouts, and she kicks her brother’s knee under the table. Rin winces and he reaches down to rub his kneecap, but there’s still a hint of a smile on his face.

“Hey, be mad at me all you want, you’re still the one’s that have to buy this idiot lunch for a month each.”

“I guess I lucked out with getting put on archives last week.” Nitori says, quietly, but relieved.

“I may be an idiot, but I’m the smartest one in this room.” Seijuurou says around a mouthful of hamburger.

There’s a gentle knocking on the doorframe of Breakroom A, and everyone looks up to see Haruka standing with another cutely-wrapped bento box and a small plastic bag hanging around his wrist. “Do I have to ask to join you guys, or can I just come in?”  
  
“It’s a communal lunch area.” Rei says, matter-of-fact, his eyes trained on some research documents from the wet lab. Nonetheless, he pats the seat next to him just as he had at Haruka’s welcome lunch, and the newest member of their lunch club takes his place at the table.

He sets his bento box on the table but pushes it to the side some, focusing instead on rummaging through the plastic bag on his wrist. “Makoto wanted to thank you guys all again for making him feel so welcome.” he says, and he pulls out six smaller plastic bags of cookies, individually wrapped with different colored ribbons. “He gets really into gift-giving and baking and stuff, so he asked me to give you these.”

Gou places a hand over her heart. “You’ve gotta be _joking_ , you have the cutest husband ever.”

“Yeah, it’s why I married him.”

The table gets a good laugh at that one, and even though Haruka delivered it so dryly, there’s still a hint of a smile on his face as he passes around the small cookie bags and returns to his own lunch. They eat through comfortable conversation and friendly jeering, each of them taking their own part at one point or another in their small group of tired college graduates working at an aquarium, and even though Nagisa’s wallet is just a bit lighter from buying Seijuurou’s lunch, he looks at their little group and he smiles.

“What are you so happy about?” Rei asks, seemingly without looking up, but Nagisa nudges his foot under the table.

“I told you, Rei-chan. Fortune favors the bold.”

“But you lost -” Rei starts, looking up at Nagisa, but he sees how he’s looking at their ragtag group of aquarists, from the weird dolphin guy with the tall husband to the shark-fixated exasperated vice supervisor to the sea otter enthusiast with a penchant for fast food, and gets it. So he nudges Nagisa’s foot back and smiles at him, and their lunch continues on, uninterrupted and peaceful.

 


End file.
